Talk to Us
[In my February letter to Whatcom Watch, “Cautionary Tale for Nuclear Power” (https://whatcomwatch.org/index.php/article/cautionary-tale-for-nuclearpower/), I note that Microsoft is promoting nuclear power for its data centers. This article dives deeper into the public health threat posed by Bill Gates’ latest endeavor.]
Different societies and cultures respond to crisis in different ways. As Tokyo tried to downplay the threat of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown, in the United States, the federal government was busy figuring out how to spin its way out of the exposure of corrupt relations between nuclear oversight agencies and the industry they are supposed to regulate.
While we waited to see if Fukushima became the next Chernobyl, I enjoyed an article by my friend Juli in Atlanta. (https://www.idyllopuspress.com/idyllopus/hanford_declassified/mtfuji.htm) We both grew up next to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southeast Washington state. Prior to Chernobyl, Hanford was the most contaminated site on earth.
Since Native Americans have born the brunt of the nuclear industry in the United States, it might be wise for us to hear what they have to say as well. This 2001 talk at the University of Washington by Russell Jim is also related to Hanford (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTLCSFN2fH4). Russell was a fellow and board member of the Center for World Indigenous Studies, and was in charge of the negotiations between the Yakama Indian Nation and the U.S. government to clean up Hanford, the largest Superfund site in the country.
Indigenous peoples in Canada also live on the front lines of the battle for survival. The National Film Board of Canada documentary “Uranium” lays it all out in detail (https://www.nfb.ca/film/Uranium/).
When I was in college in the early 1970s, I did research on nuclear-related carcinogenic medical statistics for the people who ultimately stopped the proliferation of plants in Washington state. Later in that decade, it was revealed that two of the plants, halted after construction, had life-threatening structural deficiencies due to fraudulent X-rays submitted by the contractor in order to omit the required steel reinforcement for the massive concrete structures, and thence pocket substantial profits on the bid.
Later yet, watching the movie “China Syndrome,” I was reminded of this simple fact about nuclear energy: it’s a boondoggle for heavy industry at taxpayers’ expense — always has been — and, with that amount of public funds on the table, it will always attract crooks.
Twenty years ago on National Public Radio, I listened to a nuclear skeptic debate a nuclear apologist, and learned about both improved technology and the still unsolved waste storage dilemma, as well as nuclear power’s unavoidable vulnerability to sabotage. I also learned that each plant in the United States required a billion dollars annual government subsidy just to operate, waste disposal and management issues aside. And, I almost learned about a recent failure of the most modern of designs built in France before NPR’s host nervously scrambled to commercial.
The Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS) nuclear plant fiasco of the 1970s may be the best known example of shoddy construction, inadequate oversight, and Nuclear Regulatory Commission coverup of quality-control fraud, but it is only one of many examples across the country that combine to create a notorious track record that should make even the most gullible among us skeptical about trusting these shifty no-counts with our money, let alone our lives.
(In 2018, President Trump attempted to withhold information about nuclear facilities from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which has long advised the Department of Energy on worker safety problems at high-risk facilities around the country, like the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.)
As the new nuclear boondoggle begins, I envision a personal reactor prototype roll-out that makes use of the popularity of the film “Back to the Future,” by featuring a home-use nuclear power reactor that fits in the trunk of a plutonium-fueled vehicle, which can be used to feed the electrical grid when parked in the garage at home. This “Breakthrough Clean Energy” innovation would create spin-off industries such as spent fuel rod recycling drop-off centers, perhaps at Walmart, where consumers could spend Superfund credits issued by the Department of Energy as a win-win public/private collaboration. While at Walmart, they could get their bodies tested for radiation in walk-through Geiger counters.
Jay Taber
Blaine, WA
